Top grid regulator: SoCal in 'fine shape' for summer without San Onofre

Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during an energy conference at the Westgate Hotel in downtown San Diego.

Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during an energy conference at the Westgate Hotel in downtown San Diego. (Howard Lipin)

A top federal regulatory official for electrical-grid reliability is confident that San Diego County's summer power needs can be addressed without the troubled San Onofre nuclear plant.

The reactivation of non-nuclear generation plants and preparations to reduce peak power demands in the event of hot weather should ensure uninterrupted service if San Onofre remains offline, said Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff.

The commission, also known as FERC, regulates transmission and the wholesale electricity market, protecting the reliability of the high-voltage interstate grid.

"With the reports that I've read, I believe that there are adequate resources" for the summer, Wellinghoff said Monday after a speaking engagement in San Diego. "I think we're going to be in fine shape."

At full capacity, San Onofre supplies as much as 20 percent of the electricity needs for San Diego County and a large swath of Southern California extending into the Los Angeles Basin.

The seaside, twin-reactor plant has been offline since January after a leak and signs of rapid wear on tubing within the plants recently replaced steam generators.

Prospects are dimming for the plant's return to service to help meet peak summer demand, as air conditioners soak up power. Plant operator Southern California Edison has yet to submit a plan for restarting the plant to federal safety regulators.

To compensate for the outage, utility companies and grid operators have reactivated two retired natural gas generators from the AES Huntington Beach plant. And state regulators have approved additional demand-response programs by Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric that reward consumers who cut consumption at the right time.

Wellinghoff said a summer-long outage would provide significant lessons about the region's capacity to reduce power consumption on short notice through conservation, voluntary cutoffs and pricing incentives, though government experts have warned that prices for replacement power may rise.

"There may be somewhat of a silver lining to this outage," he said. "It can help us all better understand ... the benefits from calling on those resources to be flexible."

So-called demand-response programs that treat energy efficiency and conservation as a resource in its own right now offset roughly 10 percent of electricity demands in some areas of the eastern United States, Wellinghoff explained. Estimates by FERC say consumer response could eventually offset twice that share.

Those numbers could steer the future of nuclear power in states like California, which last week adopted the building standards for energy efficiency regarded as the most aggressive in the nation.

"You couple these things together and there certainly may be the opportunity to retire certain types of resources like nuclear facilities if the state were to chose to do so," the FERC chairman said.